ALL THINGS ILL-CONSIDERED

SCOTUS Rocked as Legendary Reporter, 82, Makes Bombshell Error

NPR committed a huge journalistic blunder about a key justice’s future.

NPR has dramatically retracted a news story announcing that conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito would retire—and admitted its reporting was wrong.

The story, written by longtime legal affairs NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg, 82, was published minutes after Alito dissented from the Supreme Court ruling to keep birthright citizenship in place.

Her report was replaced by an editor’s note.

“Editor’s Note: Earlier today we erroneously published a story saying that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. He has not announced his retirement and we have retracted the story,” the story now reads.

But in a statement, NPR editor-in-chief Thomas Evans went far further, blaming Totenberg directly for the error.

“NPR’s Supreme Court and Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg incorrectly reported that Justice Samuel Alito had retired. Neither Justice Alito nor the Supreme Court Public Information Office has announced his retirement,” Evans said. “As soon as the error was realized, the story was retracted and removed from NPR’s website and an on-air correction was broadcast. We regret the error and any confusion this may have caused.

Evans added that Totenberg would be on NPR’s All Things Considered later Tuesday to explain what happened and had contacted Alito to offer an apology.

The retracted article went through an extra step in the editing process, known at NPR as “the backstop,” The New York Times reported. The extra layer was added in 2024, as a final way to make sure errors were not published.

But because Totenberg’s article cited an announcement, not a source, the network did not take additional steps to verify the accuracy of the information, according to the Times.

The timing of NPR’s false report comes at an already big moment for the high court, as it has handed down several major decisions on Tuesday, including striking down President Donald Trump’s attempt to do away with birthright citizenship.

Alito, 76, is the court’s second-oldest justice and has not made any indication that he is retiring. Earlier this year, however, he was secretly rushed to a hospital after falling ill during a Federalist Society dinner. He was evaluated and given fluids for dehydration before returning to his home in Virginia that night, CNN reported at the time.

He has long been seen as one of the next justices to retire. If he were to step down, Trump would be given his fourth opportunity to nominate someone to the high court.

The NPR mistake came a day after the oldest Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, 78, was spotted at the Capitol on Monday, with many speculating he was seeing the in-house doctor. Thomas had a health scare in 2022, when he was admitted to the hospital for an infection with “flu-like symptoms,” though his transfer was only disclosed two days later.

Totenberg has spent decades covering the Supreme Court and had a number of scoops in previous years. In 1991 she was the first to report that Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, leading the Senate Judiciary Committee to reopen its confirmation hearings for Thomas. In 1987, her revelation that Ronald Reagan nominee Douglas Ginsburg had used marijuana cost him his nomination.

But her close friendship with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg led to questions over whether she crossed ethical boundaries by failing to report the truth on her health. Many critics said her relationship made it difficult for her to accurately report on Ginsburg’s physical fitness for the bench.

Until NPR admitted Totenberg was wrong, there had been speculation that the now-deleted story appears to have been prewritten, a tactic commonly used in journalism, in which reporters write stories in anticipation of major news events, especially deaths, before they happen.

Several other outlets have made similar prewrite publishing errors.

In 2020, the website of Radio France Internationale mistakenly published around 100 prewritten obituaries for prominent names, including Queen Elizabeth II. In 2022, Bloomberg News published a headline titled “Russia invades Ukraine” before Russia had actually done so.

More recently, CNN erroneously published an article and a video titled “Remembering the life of Michael J. Fox.”

Fox, who is still alive, responded online, saying, “How do you react when you turn on the TV and CNN is reporting your death?” adding “I thought the world was ending, but apparently it’s just me and I’m ok.”

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Annabella RosciglioneReporter

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